IT with Passion

Article originally written in 11 Sep 1999

My story with computers did not start along time a go, in fact it was in 1994 when my uncle offered me a PC, it was Amstrad PC with 8086 processor (XT). I was happy with the computer; because I was doing an Electronics Engineering course and I thought it would be help full if I had a computer at home. At that time I did not realised that moment would be the biggest turning point in my life and in my career. The computer was operating an operation system called ‘DOS PLUS’ and a kind of windows called ‘GEM Desktop’.

After sitting in the university laps for a while I realised that this OS was not a standard one, so I made up my mind to install MS-DOS ver 6.22 instead.After all you can not imagine the specifications of my valuable computer; it was with a single 5.25″ double density drive and without a hard disk. The display adapter was black & white (mono). Nowadays generations don’t know a DD 5.25″ disk drive, the capacity of the floppy disk was 360KByte, and they were so sensitive that you should expect to loose your data any time, especially if you lived in a country where dust storms are a norm. I used to have more that 50 of those.With such computer specifications I was quite happy to start a new era in my life a new sunset and a long night with the computer.

I started with GW-BASIC a very old version of BASIC; it used to be in some computers’ ROM. It was very convenient; the Interpreter size was small and fitted in one diskette. I started by reading a book to know the syntax of the language. I was quite happy with the task of programming, writing simple programs for solving equations or plotting a curve, and I realised the more I spent on the computer the more effective and useful programs I wrote. After a while I was able to get Microsoft Q-BASIC which came with MS-DOS, and I started programming with it, a nice editor with pull down menus, not like the plain GW-BASIC and mouse support. So I started writing some programs which helped me with my university study, like Electromagnetics, Solid State Electronics, Power Systems and such stuff. And at that time I realised that programming is an art. The problem was, at the time I did not have enough sources of information, no books, no Internet, even no useful software, and I was so eager to learn that nothing was to stop me, so I started with the Q-BASIC On-line help, by writing the functions from the screen on my papers, and I spent long nights doing so (I had no printer that time) besides I was happy to satisfy my thirst to learn a programming language.

After some time, I knew from my senior colleagues that we would be doing FORTRAN language (FORmula TRANslation) in the next term. So I did not want to wait till it was taught and started studying the language on my own. Some guys told me that this language is powerful, but I knew after a while it’s very old and in the old days it was so great, the language does not even have functions or procedures for creating nice interface and really I hate a program without a nice interface. The language was full of formatting (integers, reals, etc…), I’m not saying it was not useful, in fact it got me nearer and nearer to numbers and dealing with real numbers exponentials, etc…. And I developed some debugging skills. It was hard with my old computer because the language generates executable files not like the Q-BASIC (I was very happy with the idea of an EXE file) so I needed two diskettes one for the compiler and another for the linker entering them one after another in the drive.

It was since the mid 1996 when I have decided to learn a structured programming language, and for us, electronics engineers C++ was our preferred language, and I was about to go for it, but I still remember those moments when a friend of mine advice me to go for Turbo Pascal telling me that it’s easy to learn, and that I can study C++ later. And I thank god that moment I listened to him and started learning Turbo Pascal. Actually I program in C++ now, and I can do things I would never ever be able to do if I had started C++ without knowing Turbo Pascal. I love that language specially the compilers written by Borland International, I have started using Turbo Pascal ver 5.5 some colleagues has told me about older version and how it used to generate primitive things like COM file, it was not long till I got ver 6.0 then ver 7.0.

And it was in 1997 when my uncle sent me Borland Pascal Ver 7.0 package from the United States. And it was in mid 1997 when I have started programming with her majesty Borland Delphi ver 1.0 (the 16 bit version) and after some time ver 2.0 (32-bit version).But when I started Turbo Pascal ver 7.0, I got a new computer, a 486 DX4 with 8MByte RAM and SVGA display adapter and monitor, the operating system was MS-DOS ver 6.22 and MS-Windows ver 3.1 it was a quite a luxurious computer, although it was without multimedia, and just a 3.5″ HD floppy disk drive, that was in late 1997, afterwards in early 1998 I was able to buy an Epson laser printer, it was very expensive, but I have been working and saving money for along time.

I have started C language in the early 1997, and it was quite easy after learning Turbo Pascal, in the same time I was able to understand the basics of the Assembly Language, and the primitive computer instructions (the low-level stuff. And really it helped me a lot in my interface projects, since I have started reading about the computer ports (serial port & parallel port) in late 1997, and having the programming power in my hand I was able to do many projects like, Computerized home model, where you can use computers (especially old ones like XTs or 286 & 386) to control every electric device in the house, or the Link program where I can copy files from one computer to another using the serial or parallel port, or the Digital Signal Processing (DSP, remember originally I was an electronics engineer) models where signals can be sampled and entered to the computer via serial or parallel port and then processed (filtered, etc..) to do some useful task, and at last but not least my intelligent computerized alarm system.

And it was in same time in 1997 when my uncle was the manager of a PC selling company and he offered me a training in my holiday, and really it was more that just useful I have assembled more than 500 hundred computers starting form scratch, and I have installed the operating systems for all that number, besides I have learned software and hardware troubleshooting, in fact I have built my 486 myself.